RoboBees: Harvard Researchers Develop Robotic Insects
Posted on May 2, 2013
Harvard researchers have built tiny insect-sized robots. They have also demonstrated the first test flights of the tiny robots, which are half the size of a paperclip and weigh less than a tenth of a gram.
The tiny bots are the culmination of more than a decade's work, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. The robot was inspired by the biology of a fly. It has two wafer-thin wings that flap 120 times per second. The robots, called RoboBees, achieve vertical takeoff, hovering, and steering. Take a look:
The researchers says applications of the RoboBee project could include distributed environmental monitoring, search-and-rescue operations, or assistance with crop pollination. The researchers say the materials, fabrication techniques, and components used might prove to be even more significant than the tiny bots themselves. The research was published in the journal, Science.
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